Mindset : The New Psychology of Success pdfdrive com

Finding Your Brain
A close friend of mine recently handed me something he’d written, a poem-story
that reminded me of Jimmy and his unleashed effort. My friend’s second-grade
teacher,  Mrs.  Beer,  had  had  each  student  draw  and  cut  out  a  paper  horse.  She
then  lined  up  all  the  horses  above  the  blackboard  and  delivered  her  growth-

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mindset message: “Your horse is only as fast as your brain. Every time you learn
something, your horse will move ahead.”
My friend wasn’t so sure about the “brain” thing. His father had always told
him, “You have too much mouth and too little brains for your own good.” Plus,
his  horse  seemed  to  just  sit  at  the  starting  gate  while  “everyone  else’s  brain
joined  the  learning  chase,”  especially  the  brains  of  Hank  and  Billy,  the  class
geniuses,  whose  horses  jumped  way  ahead  of  everyone  else’s.  But  my  friend
kept at it. To improve his skills, he kept reading the comics with his mother and
he kept adding up the points when he played gin rummy with his grandmother.
And soon my sleek stallion
bolted forward like Whirlaway,
and there was no one
who was going to stop him.
Over the weeks and months
he flew forward overtaking
the others one by one.
In the late spring homestretch
Hank’s and Billy’s mounts were ahead
by just a few subtraction exercises, and
when the last bell of school rang,
my horse won—“By a nose!”
Then I knew I had a brain:
I had the horse to prove it.
—PAUL WORTMAN
Of course, learning shouldn’t really be a race. But this race helped my friend
discover his brain and connect it up to his schooling.